Franklin Delano Roosevelt, named by Time Magazine "the foremost statesman and political leader" of the 20th Century, founded the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation in 1927. By 1930, the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, now Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, had established itself as a respected polio rehabilitation center. It soon became a world renowned polio treatment center and remained so after Roosevelt's death at Warm Springs on April 12, 1945.
As a result, shifting focus evolved and the adjacent Georgia Rehabilitation Center was created in 1964 to provide vocational rehabilitation for persons with disabilities throughout the State of Georgia. Ten years later, the state assumed operation of the Foundation hospital, turning it into a medical rehabilitation facility that today specializes in brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke, orthopedic and general rehabilitation services.
